DESCRIPTION This manual page documents briefly the
emacsclient command. Full docu- mentation is available in
the GNU Info format; see below. This manual page was
originally written for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution,
but is not specific to that system.

emacsclient works in conjunction with the built-in Emacs
server.

You can either call emacsclient directly or let other
programs run it for you when necessary. On GNU and Unix
systems many programs consult the environment variable
EDITOR (sometimes also VISUAL) to obtain the command used
for editing. Thus, setting this environment variable to
emacsclient will allow these programs to use an already
running Emacs for editing. Other operating systems might
have their own methods for defining the default editor.

For emacsclient to work, you need an already running
Emacs with a server. Within Emacs, call the functions
server-start or server- mode. (Your .emacs file can do this
automatically if you add either (server-start) or
(server-mode 1) to it.)

When you ve finished editing the buffer, type C-x # (
server-edit). This saves the file and sends a message back
to the emacsclient pro- gram telling it to exit. The
programs that use EDITOR wait for the "editor"
(actually, emacsclient) to exit. C-x # also checks for other
pending external requests to edit various files, and selects
the next such file.

If you set the variable server-window to a window or a
frame, C-x # displays the server buffer in that window or in
that frame.

OPTIONS The programs follow the usual GNU command line
syntax, with long options starting with two dashes (-).

-nw, -t, --tty open a new Emacs frame on the current
terminal

-c, --create-frame create a new frame instead of trying
to use the current Emacs frame

-e, --eval do not visit files but instead evaluate the
arguments as Emacs Lisp expressions.

-n, --no-wait returns immediately without waiting for
you to "finish" the buffer in Emacs.

-s, --socket-name=FILENAME use socket named FILENAME for
communication.

-f, --server-file=FILENAME use TCP configuration file
FILENAME for communication. This can also be specified via
the EMACS_SERVER_FILE environment variable.

-a, --alternate-editor=EDITOR if the Emacs server is not
running, run the specified editor instead. This can also be
specified via the ALTERNATE_EDITOR environment variable. If
the value of EDITOR is the empty string, then Emacs is
started in daemon mode and emacsclient will try to connect
to it.

-d, --display=DISPLAY tell the server to display the
files on the given display.

-V, --version print version information and exit

-H, --help print this usage information message and
exit

SEE ALSO The program is documented fully in Using Emacs
as a Server available via the Info system.

AUTHOR This manual page was written by Stephane
Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@debian.org>, for the Debian
GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).